Friday, December 14, 2012

So, I'm not really officially blogging
again. (Unless I decide that I am.) But something came to my inbox today that
left me half-laughing and half-offended. It’s so outrageous that I had to share
it, and 140 characters simply won’t do.

(Complete and unedited text of an advertising
email I got from one of the sugardaddy/sugarbaby sites.)

Hello Beautiful,

As an attractive, independent woman, you get all the breaks:
skipping lines at clubs, free drinks, higher employment rate, and now you are
avoiding the "Fiscal Cliff".Luckily for you, you're not ugly; because unfortunately, by order of
natural selection, ugly women lose... and only the beautiful survive.

Your government wants to push you off a "cliff",
so don't get caught without your "parachute". Starting January 3,
2013, women like you will lose at least two thousand dollars to higher taxes.
And unless they find a Sugar Daddy who can be their "parachute", they
will fall off the "cliff" with the rest of the women.

So, do you know a beautiful woman, like yourself, that you
want to save from the Fiscal Cliff? Share this email with her to guarantee that
both of you have your "parachutes".

Let’s examine this bit by bit, shall
we? In the first line, we get some passive-aggressive whining about the benefits
of being considered an attractive person. Which do exist, although I must point
out that attractive men also tend to have
higher employment rates. (I would imagine that they could get free drinks with
no lines, too – if they went to gay bars. You have to consider your audience.) Plus, I thought everyone was currently avoiding the fiscal cliff, not just attractive independent women.

Second line: people who have not
really read Darwin should not try to reference his theories.

Third line: now we’re getting down
to it. The writer is correct to put quotation marks around “cliff”, because it’s actually not a cliff. I suppose he’s right to put them around “parachute” as
well, since in the event that one did, literally, fall off a cliff, your
standard-issue parachute would not help the situation.

Fourth line: Since all attractive women
apparently fall into the same tax bracket. And retroactive middle-class tax
breaks that are overwhelmingly likely to be passed don’t apply to us, it
seems.

Fifth line: And the GOP wonders why
women thought a war had been declared on them? Who wrote this, Todd Akin and
Richard Murdock?

Sixth line: You know, if I did think
I was about to “fall” off a “cliff” and I needed a “parachute” to save me from
the fate of “the rest of the women”, I’m not sure I’d be inviting other
beautiful women hang onto my legs. Kind of goes against that natural selection
thing, you see. I really hate it when terrible ad copy is so philosophically inconsistent.

So this is terrible writing, and a
completely lame and somewhat offensive premise, but I must reluctantly give it
points for sheer marketing nerve. You have
to appreciate it when a website takes a markedly republican-ish point of view
about the current financial situation and spins that into what is, basically,
the suggestion that women should be sex workers and encourage their friends to
be, too.

I’m somewhat disappointed to see that they didn’t try to work any of
the social-conservatism angles into this pitch, though. They could have done
something about how undocumented foreign women are going to take all the
American men? Or how now that gays can marry, all the men (or should I call
them “parachutes”?) are going to marry EACH OTHER! And leave us women to go
over the cliff. An opportunity missed, there.

Ironically, I got this more or less
right after reading an unbelievably condescending bit of tripe by Glenn Reynolds
saying, essentially, that the unmarried women who didn’t vote for Romney were “low
information voters”, and that the GOP should court us by buying some women’s
magazines and putting Republican-friendly “feel-good stories” among the “the
usual stuff on sex, diet and shopping”.

I’m unmarried, Glenn. I read fashion
magazines – and that is what you are talking about: fashion magazines. Not all
women read them, and not only women read them, either. Let me tell you what
else I read, every day: The New York Times, The Washington Post, and the CNN
site.* It will shock you to know that I’m not a big HuffPo fan.In addition, at least once a week, I go look
at The Weekly Standard and The Wall Street Journal. I sometimes even check out (god
help me) The National Review, because I’m one of those crazy people who thinks
one shouldn’t live in an echo chamber. I find that works out well for me.

In short, I am anything but low-information. And I still did not
vote for Romney. So take your patronizing drivel about my woefully-uninformed
female brain and go fall off a cliff with it. Your ideas about how the GOP should to appeal to women are less intelligent and much more offensive than this email.

*Also frequent reads: The LA
Times, The Stranger/Slog, The Seattle Times (although not that much) Talking
Points Memo, and The Economist.

Thursday, December 13, 2012

Hi. So, yeah - I'm not blogging so much these days. Who knows, this blog may live again some time, but not right now.

If you're new here, check out the archives for seven years of articles about sex, BDSM, sex work, polyamory, and various other topics both sacred and profane. The last few years have tags, or employ an advanced Google search to find keywords. If it has to do with sex, I've probably written about it.